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The March 5-7 White Lion Obs/Nowcasting Thread


Ji

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It's interesting that Dulles is reporting 3.3 inches of snow. I'm just under 3 miles away, 100 feet higher up, and can walk outside of my nice warm garage and measure 5 inches of compacted snow. I wish I'd put out a snowboard and kept up with measurements...

I guess elevation made that much of a difference?

 

I don't think it was elevation but rather the location of the heavier bursts of snow.  I am also at 5" compacted and I am only 255ft ASL.  Another guy in Gainesville which is about 5mi from here was reporting 8".

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For your locale, I find it more of a problem that the lulls in precip warmed the column and raised the dews as stated above. Also, the banding wasn't present as some of the later models had shown, and the WAA precip was robbed as the primary subdued.

How did every model miss this while we were already receiving waa snow? That's just plain odd. Overwhelming guidance was saying to expect over .5 liquid by 7-9am. That's why I was really surprised when I woke up. I had a sinking feeling then but still refused to believe a complete bust was on tap.

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This is more like the "March 5-7 White Lion Obs/WISHCASTING Thread" for those of us east of I-95!

Anyway, not sure if it was mentioned, but did anyone give any attention to those above normal water temps off the coast? Neither did I. Any kind of easterly component pretty much sealed the BL fate for those of us under 250'.

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This is more like the "March 5-7 White Lion Obs/WISHCASTING Thread" for those of us east of I-95!

Anyway, not sure if it was mentioned, but did anyone give any attention to those above normal water temps off the coast? Neither did I. Any kind of easterly component pretty much sealed the BL fate for those of us under 250'.

 

The temps are anamolously warm there, and yes, the column was susceptible to the advecting of that warm flow on east winds. 

 

What happened to crashing temps as the storm bombed? If anything, temps went up all day.

The crashing of temps would have been more so in the mid levels, however not as much for the surface. The surface wasn't really supposed to crash, especially considering no true cold air source within hundreds of miles. 

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What happened to crashing temps as the storm bombed? If anything, temps went up all day.

Think we hoped rise would be limited. We did a lot of hoping one way or another.

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What happened to crashing temps as the storm bombed? If anything, temps went up all day.

The winter weather expert on TWC Greg Postel said there was a lot more warm air aloft than was expected. Plus even when our winds turned towards the north it was to warm there to help us at all.

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The temps are anamolously warm there, and yes, the column was susceptible to the advecting of that warm flow on east winds.

The crashing of temps would have been more so in the mid levels, however not as much for the surface. The surface wasn't really supposed to crash, especially considering no true cold air source within hundreds of miles.

...with the March 6th sun angle at 38-39N. But I guess that goes without saying ;)

So for those of us like myself who were counting on a nearly non-isothermal lapse rate near the surface were highly disappointed. Those warmer near surface temps per the GFS and EC were actually right, especially after 15Z, even though it was flirting with -3C at 850 mb. A lapse rate closer to moist adiabatic than isothermal, that's for sure.

Meanwhile the NAM, SREF, RAP...all too cold at the surface. Again.

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I was at 33ish until just recently. I had almost no rain. I also had no period of decent rates for more than 30 minutes at a time. I don't remember anybody including occasional snow for hours on end with no periods of heavy snow in their forecast.

Yes, temps were a problem for some. But they weren't for me irt to precip type. Something else went terribly wrong in my yard.

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I was at 33ish until just recently. I had almost no rain. I also had no period of decent rates for more than 30 minutes at a time. I remember anybody including occasional snow for hours on end with no periods of heavy snow in their forecast.

Yes, temps were a problem for some. But they weren't for me irt to precip type. Something else went terribly wrong in my yard.

 

low seemed disjointed for a long time even today it's pretty elongated E/W with precip. we needed more thump and a new hobby.

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...with the March 6th sun angle at 38-39N. But I guess that goes without saying ;)

So for those of us like myself who were counting on a nearly non-isothermal lapse rate near the surface were highly disappointed. Those warmer near surface temps per the GFS and EC were actually right, especially after 15Z, even though it was flirting with -3C at 850 mb. A lapse rate closer to moist adiabatic than isothermal, that's for sure.

Meanwhile the NAM, SREF, RAP...all too cold at the surface. Again.

The lower levels were saturated on the soundings, and the drier convectively unstable layer never really worked out for the greatest banding. I found it too be too much of a wet adiabatic LR, agreed. 

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I was at 33ish until just recently. I had almost no rain. I also had no period of decent rates for more than 30 minutes at a time. I don't remember anybody including occasional snow for hours on end with no periods of heavy snow in their forecast.

Yes, temps were a problem for some. But they weren't for me irt to precip type. Something else went terribly wrong in my yard.

 

Actually, your yard is about the one place the NAM got right.  That clown map yesterday was on to something...

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I was at 33ish until just recently. I had almost no rain. I also had no period of decent rates for more than 30 minutes at a time. I don't remember anybody including occasional snow for hours on end with no periods of heavy snow in their forecast.

Yes, temps were a problem for some. But they weren't for me irt to precip type. Something else went terribly wrong in my yard.

Yeah, down here by White Flint, we did manage to go over 2" on grass-- mostly from that first burst after sunrise, which coated side streets as well. So, when it came down hard enough, it could stick. As you said, we just could never sustain that rate of snowfall for longer than half-an-hour. 

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low seemed disjointed for a long time even today it's pretty elongated E/W with precip. we needed more thump and a new hobby.

I'm moving my home office deep into my basement with no windows and I'm going to sleep there too. I don't want to see the sky for a month. I know cold turkey can be dangerous but I'm pretty tough and I really need to get off this stuff.

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I was at 33ish until just recently. I had almost no rain. I also had no period of decent rates for more than 30 minutes at a time. I don't remember anybody including occasional snow for hours on end with no periods of heavy snow in their forecast.

Yes, temps were a problem for some. But they weren't for me irt to precip type. Something else went terribly wrong in my yard.

 

i think part of not having good rates might have been due to not having a nice dome of cold air for the moisture to rise up and over.  i could be wrong, but it seems like that goes hand in hand sometimes. 

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Seriously, what we needed was for this same track to occur in Jan or Feb with a colder antecedent airmass and a lower sun angle. I would have taken those chances. Let's not wait until March next year before finally getting a favorable track.

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Did any models show what went down in ric? I never really paid attention. I convinced that was the beginning of the end for us. Once the slp went ballistic down there, we never got rockin up here.

 

Euro was always halfway decent down here - practically every run  for the past four days showed somewhere between 2-6" of snow for the metro (taken verbatim of course).

 

Then there was also that ridiculous 0z NAM run the other night.

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What happened to crashing temps as the storm bombed? If anything, temps went up all day.

As good as models and mets can be, unfortunately the actual weather often can only be "forecasted" retrospectively.  I'm sure we will get a variety of explanations for this bust.  As Bob Chill stated earlier, this is clearly not the storm evolution that was fairly well portrayed just 12-24 hours ago.

 

MDstorm

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